Easy to grasp

Apr 2, 2010 07:39 GMT  ·  By

There's a World Cup taking place in South Africa this year, meaning that in addition to preparing a whole new FIFA 11, EA Sports is also working on delivering 2010 FIFA World Cup to gamers just before the real world tournament kicks off. The title is being prepared for the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, the Nintendo Wii, the PSP and the iPhone, and will arrive towards the end of the month. Not surprisingly, the developers are thinking about using 2010 FIFA World Cup to expand the audience for the series.

Simon Humber, who is the line producer working on 2010 FIFA World Cup, told Eurogamer that “As well as the usual FIFA controls we've added an ability to play the game with two buttons. We're calling it the Dad Pad as we hope it'll bring sons and fathers together to play.”

The hope at EA Sports is that those football lovers who are not also videogame enthusiasts and have problems actually controlling their players will be able to get right into the game by using one button to pass the ball and one to shoot. The challenge will be to make the mode easy enough for anyone to be able to get into it while also offering enough control over the players to render the experience satisfying.

The system is not actually a dumbed down version of the normal control system but a refinement. The longer a player holds down the button for the command, the harder they will shoot or pass.

Sprinting will also be automated to make the game easier to grasp. Of course, the mode will not allow a new player to win against a veteran of the previous five years of FIFA but will permit more people to get a taste of the game and later move on to the more complex control scheme. We'll see whether it's a success in early May.